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TTL stands for "Time To Live". This is a piece of data in a network packet that specifies how many routers the packet can pass through before the packet expires and is thrown away.

Every router that the packet travels through subtracts one from the TTL counter. When it reaches zero, the packet expires. The router will drop the packet, and then send a message back to the computer that sent the packet telling it that the packet has expired.

The purpose of the TTL counter is to make routing loops less dangerous. Let me explain....

Routers are devices that look at an incoming data packet and decide where to send it to get it one step closer to its destination. It's possible for one or more routers to be configured such that router A sends the packet to router B, which sends it to router C, which sends it to router A, which then starts it over again. Without the TTL counter, this packet (and any subsequent packet sent to the same destination) would circulate endlessly, taking up bandwidth until someone fixes the routing loop.

However, with TTL, each router subtracts one from the TTL counter until eventually the counter hits zero and the packet goes away, giving someone time to fix the problem before the links are so congested with looping packets that it's no longer possible to talk to the router.

TTL can affect network security in a couple of ways.

Most operating systems set the TTL counter to 64 or 128, which is a pretty large number that will guarantee your packet can get across the internet.

To improve your network security, you can set your TTL counter to a low number. If your internal network is only four routers wide, you can set your TTL to 4. This will ensure that any packets generated on your network will not travel very far beyond your internal network.

An attacker can also use the TTL feature to probe your network for the existence and address of your routers. This feature is used by the "traceroute" or "tracert" utility. It works by sending out a packet with a TTL of 1. The first router that the packet encounters will decrement the TTL to 0, drop the packet, then send a message to the traceroute program telling it that the packet expired. By looking at the source address of this packet, traceroute knows the address of the first router. Next traceroute sends a packet with a TTL of 2, which causes the packet to expire at the second router, which sends a message back to traceroute and exposing its address. And so on.

Once an attacker knows the addresses of your routers, he or she can start working on compromising them, which can cause you no end of security problems.

The solution is to prevent these packets from reaching your routers by using a firewall to block them.

HTH,

Gdunge

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16y ago

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